i went to Lebanon to visit family
and all i got
was this stupid t-shirt
a two week journey to Beirut
three-and-half weeks in Syria
a short journey to Afghanistan
two months holed up in a basement
three weeks blindfolded travel
five years in Guantomano Bay
did i mention the t-shirt  ¶ 4:22 pm 0 Comments

  thought to write something meaningful came up with this instead
developed a slight insomnia and a migraine to the head  ¶ 1:49 am 0 Comments

  likewise...iv that stinging - cringe burning pain. shrapnel poured from my penis. that hollow toilet ring. striking back at you in the green light. count the cocky steps scamper across the cement floor, over brothers. that ring around the cheeks. cash couldn't free this up, not the blockage the solid cold will do to the pipes. a good anti-freeze is necessary, but there is none of that in this tin can. i'm just waiting for the oven. til then this waste bucket will give me ten minutes. if hell were a freezer i must be the caviar. all the meat goes to rot in here. no salt of the earth. i always ate my meat fresh, but i can see some people in here are used to the snap frozen variety. there no movement, not even for the bowels. i want to shit. i need to shit. this fucking cold waste liner of a toilet will never let me shit. even if the screw wasn't gonna stand on my balls in a few minutes. i still wouldn't be able to shit. i must bring a towel next time. or better yet a hair dryer, maybe then i would be able to drown myself.

and it was like i was drowning. in the sweat and the blood, i failed to notice the perspiration on the mirrors. the sun may have sunk into the ocean, devoured by all means the earth may have, for all my knowledge. yet the danger, in the heat, the wave of uncertainty, sunk not a degree. it all seems so very overwhelming. the world, the everything, truth and the universe, maybe my place in it. i just wanted to hold your hand. i just wanted to hold your hand. drive into that final night and never know such dark places ever again. the sun's down going. i guess sometime i had to come off down the mountain. really, my mind could not have been that far behind. but it was on horseback, and one has to remember that horses need water. otherwise they might die in the heat. couldn't leave that metaphor running wild out there. so i parked the truck in a tree and decided to walk.

take a gander down at the local fish markets and look into those sunken eyes. when did they ever find the time to swallow up their last gulp of air and choke. life reflected from those glassy pits, they just lack that extraneous movement, flapping and flipping of a dead fish. so little between the dead and the dying. they don't want to think about it - why that would be just too god damn destructive. that little world of men has to have the trade off of time for time in lieu. i part my legs now so i can fuck you right up the clacker later, and you will be waiting for it, expecting it. gives you something to live for. i can't stop the biting. the constant gnawing of nail and skin. an unsubstantiated claim to my own body. i gotta eat myself and have that for myself. that's it with the fish, always looking forward, no time to swim backwards. no fingers to gnash and an appetite only for another. that's why there eyes always have death and life as one reflection. suck it right out of the skulls like it was some tinned jelly. you kill a man and look into his eyes. tell me then that you saw life flicker before you, tell me then you saw in his eyes the moment he died. you didn't see shit. he was already dead, and know you know. all the men in here know that much.

picked some cherries on the way home. fell asleep in the sand and dreamt about a cliff with no edge. nude washed and cheerful in a bed somewhere near Tilly Willy. I had never been so turned on in my life. i couldn't find release. it was like gripping hard caramel fudge slowly melting in a morning sun that spilt in from the paned window. the numbness made me sleepy and i though i heard a tambourine in the distance. that fucking saucepan bruised my head and the tambourine took me dancing downtown.

Labels: shortstory

  ¶ 5:18 pm 0 Comments

  vlc main: thread 2684415368: mutex_lock failed at misc/variables.c:805 (22:Invalid argument)
main: thread 2684415368: mutex_unlock failed at misc/variables.c:811 (22:Invalid argument)  ¶ 10:52 am 0 Comments

  Dear Heretic, i don't know about you, but i sure could use a drink. This fine weather leaves me parched - some laborious fatigue i tell you. Yesterday an elderly woman, quite homely and unkempt, clasped my arm as i passed through the town centre. i had envisaged my rendevous capturing my attention as i meandered absent-mindedly, but to my grief this was not so. Proceeding her attempts at ceasing my momentum she appealled to my better discretion for monetry support. I found myself somewhat out of place, as 'clearly as day' i was being accosted by this horrible creature of the back alley in full view of my fellow citizen! Yet throughout the ordeal not a single soul came to my assistance. I became appauled at this woman's indecent behaviour. I struggled to fend for myself in the bewilderment of so many 'decent folk' passing me by. The woman continued to clasp - and successfully wrinkle - my attire while to scuff the italian leather shoes i donned. The experience was terrifying. To think back now, i cannot remember for the life of me how i ridded myself of the beastly woman. I must have broken into a light jog and out tired the woman. Imagine! Me jogging. Why the idea is novel in itself.

Needless to say my companion, when i did finally come across Heraclitus, was surprised to find me in such a terrible state. Not that i had broken into a sweat but i was pert near, and in very need of a light refreshment. My attire had shown the battle wounds, such a mixture of embarassment and desparation shone from my flushed face.

I tell you my dear Heretic, never again. I shall not walk those streets until common sense has rained down on the common man. What day and age is in our midst when an armed outstretched is not returned?

Post-humously yours,
Errarcleese.  ¶ 2:45 pm 0 Comments

  monday 31st july 1. That peace depends on fear

2. That it is better to be green than gold

3. that australia is all bark and no bite  ¶ 2:35 pm 0 Comments

  Join Your Students' Association found you on a pack of cigerettes you never looked better lungs a great colour for your condition but i bet the breathing is still difficult when they are cutting down the trees all this time cars carry on and they send those boys out to another town so back at home we gotta work a little bit harder and rest a little bit easier cause it's a matter of national security and it will never get better not like it used to be but we gotta stop it from getting worse so if we all pull our thumb out get on with the job at hand pull our weight stop jiggling the bait and not get caught with our pants down we might just see it through and it won't ever be as bad as those un-patriotic leftists say it will be just a bunch of pessimists who won't see reason and will never understand the intricate nature of a world economy will always make us out to be the enemy while the real enemy hides behind their very words nevertheless we will help them when they are reasonable perhaps only when they feel the sting of the threat in their own hearts and homes then the path of victory will be straight and narrow for we will stop our enemy at their doorstep far too long have they been at ours.  ¶ 2:27 pm 0 Comments

  Who is this Zarathustra person anyway? Who Zarathustra is becomes largely defined by what Zarathustra says. The speech of Zarathustra is the main entry point into the book, THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA. The style is a series of speeches and parables that parody numerous other texts, most obvious the New Testament. Everything we garner from THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA comes from the central character himself, primarily through his words and then secondarily through his movement. However this understanding will reverse again and again. It may be granted then to say that Zarathustra is a speaker. To reveal more about Zarathustra one needs to unravel what his speech consists of. In this unravelling further questions arise; why must Zarathustra speak, to whom must Zarathustra speak, and about what must Zarathustra speak. Via the identification and discussion over these questions a greater understanding of the character of Zarathustra is possible. It may be said that a fourth question is necessary; how must Zarathustra speak. And it is, however that this question is best understood in Zarathustra’s movement, and is acceded again by his speech.

Zarathustra’s first encounter on his down going is with a hermit who asks why Zarathustra wishes to return to mankind. In response Zarathustra says that he loves mankind. The very next thing Zarathustra says is to replace love with a gift, or condition that love as a gift. However as Zarathustra addresses the public mass he sets about listing what he loves about man. It is not that Zarathustra does not love man; it is that his love for man is different to that of the saint, and as such would serve to take more away from the saint then it would to give him. So already Zarathustra is speaking as a giver, someone with a gift, and someone who does not want to take.

Zarathustra loves mankind as “arms outstretched” to receive the gift that he carries. The love Zarathustra has for mankind is not the same as the love the saint once had for mankind and this must not be confused. For Zarathustra’s love has come from a different place, and Zarathustra has been on the mountaintop for ten years so now that he may overflow with wisdom.


Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I should like to give it away and distribute it, until the wise among men have again become happy in their folly and the poor happy in their wealth.
To that end, I must descend into the depth: as you (Sun) do at evening, when you go behind the sea and bring light to the underworld too, superabundant star!

Note that Zarathustra remarks that it is his desire to give this wisdom away freely and that this desire is the ends in itself, there is nothing beyond. This ends is compared to that of the movement of the sun in Zarathustra’s address. The comparison here to the Sun invokes an Apollonian destiny to Zarathustra’s down going, and there is already necessary movement to Zarathustra. Zarathustra lives in the dark earthy cave of Dionysus upon the mountaintop that is closest to Apollo. Like the Sun he needs the people so that he may impart his gift. For Zarathustra’s gift was to be imparted nevertheless, but such that there is mankind to receive the gift is a source of happiness, a love. Zarathustra may be understood here as a giver, as he talks of unburdening himself. But the giving is not selfless. This is where the love for mankind is derived, because mankind can take this from him and thus Zarathustra loves them. For they fulfil Zarathustra as a giver. Zarathustra speaks so that he may give. The giver, Zarathustra, sees himself as a concealed giver, so that there is no retribution as it is in Christianity, as one returns to Christ.

The gift that Zarathustra carries then seems to be the primary motivation for leaving the mountaintop and coming down to the people and thus speaking. Yet Zarathustra spoke before all this. It is assumed that for sometime Zarathustra would sit upon the mountain and speak to the Sun, to the animals, and to his self. In these ten years upon the mountaintop Zarathustra fills himself with wisdom. Thus Zarathustra speaks on the mountaintop to obtain wisdom. This act of speaking has a self-educating value, a self-reflexive value. It would be foolish to ignore this tacit point; it may be assumed that while Zarathustra speaks in his down going Zarathustra is still learning. So there is already an element of self-education within speaking. Indeed Zarathustra was philosophising upon the mountaintop. There is nothing to suggest that Zarathustra would cease learning and philosophising in his down going. Here lies the double-edged nature of Zarathustra’s giving. The opportunity to impart the gift is also a further stage for self-education, a gift that Zarathustra can give to himself while not taking anything from mankind.

However Zarathustra’s address to the public is a failure. There is no preamble Zarathustra launches directly into his gift like unleashing a great burden from himself. His words are misunderstood to be the introduction to a ropedancer, and his clarification brings only icy laughter. The people cry out for the last man, so that they may now stagnant peace and satisfaction. In speaking to everyone he manages to talk to no one, a reference to the subtitle. It is noticeable that Zarathustra at this point does not embody the gift of the Übermensch when addressing the masses. That in this essence he is not the concealed gift giver that he so apparently wishes to be, and in not being concealed the masses are willing to tear and negate whatever it is that is being said. That is without listening.

Zarathustra as educator is bound to Zarathustra as giver. As Zarathustra gives and fails he learns and changes so that he may continue to impart his gift. Zarathustra recognises his astute failure to speak to the public gathering.

They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.
Perhaps I lived too long in the mountains, listened too much to the trees and the streams; now I speak to them as to goatherds.

And thus invokes change upon his down going, learning about his gift and sharpening his method of imparting such a gift.


A light has dawned for me: Zarathustra shall not speak to the people but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be herdsman and dog to the herd!
To lure many away from the herd – that is why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: the herdsman shall call Zarathustra a robber.

Zarathustra takes on companions as disciples in the city of the Pied Cow. If by reaching a few the gift may spread when it is given and concealed. The links to both Jesus and Socrates are pointed. Zarathustra leads these men around teaching them the Übermensch yet it is destined to failure. For the Übermensch does not make sense in linear time, it requires the teaching of the eternal return, which at this point is not being affirmed by Zarathustra. It is a path of indoctrination that Zarathustra is leading these disciples into. The disciples are poor students for they hold Zarathustra too dearly and are unable to destroy their indoctrination so that they might build.

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.

Without the eternal return the Übermensch is a goal, and as a goal the Übermensch does not make sense, for the goal implies an ending point, a point of resolution and the Übermensch insists on the continual movement and change of the individual as the world in which the Übermensch inhabits moves and changes. A teleological understanding of the Übermensch would hold onto the spirit of revenge in partial denial of life. This is obviously a misunderstanding, and this Zarathustra must come to realise himself as the teacher of the eternal return in order to impart the Übermensch upon the world.

Stanley Rosen puts forward the view that Zarathustra continues his down going in an aid of self-education. Zarathustra is aware that he has come at the wrong time for his gift to be imparted. Rosen suggests that Zarathustra knows that he has come too early, but perhaps he has come too late. In the face of a series of failures, failures that Zarathustra the prophet would have foreseen , Zarathustra does not return to the mountaintop immediately.

There is clear textual evidence that Zarathustra identifies himself as a prophet and teacher, among other placeholders. In the prologue alone there are two examples.

Behold I teach you the Overman; he is the lightning, he is this madness!

Behold, I am the prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overman. -

These names, modes of identity, are bound to the audience that Zarathustra is speaking to and relate directly as to how Zarathustra is presenting his gift. The primary identifying mode that Zarathustra situates himself in is one of giving; these secondary aspects refer to the how Zarathustra is giving and to whom he is giving. The mode of giving is important because the act in which it is given changes the gift itself. This concept of perspectivism is inherent in the writing of Nietzsche and is inextricably linked to the Übermensch.

Despite Zarathustra’s shifts in identity Rosen’s point of relationship between Zarathustra and Nietzsche is still interesting and does not necessarily rely on an interpretation of Zarathustra as prophet. Rosen argues that Zarathustra is a representational character for N’s own plight and place within the world and lack of intellectual companions. Rosen goes on to say that THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA is not a confessional work but rather a testament to future philosophers, and perhaps THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA prophesises the coming of Heidegger’s Being and Time.

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA once read might be understood as a story about Zarathustra coming to being. Despite ten years on the mountaintop the down going is a continuation of Zarathustra’s learning of himself and what he is. So that we may not know whom Zarathustra is until we work backwards through the books. If we do this it is noticed that Zarathustra undertakes a number of metamorphoses and changes, in style and voice. This allows multiple interpretations of Zarathustra’s identity based on how and to whom he is giving to. Zarathustra is constantly re-evaluating himself. This behaviour is aligned with Nietzche’s explications of will to power so that Zarathustra may not stagnate.

The overman’s mode of being is continuously creative; the overman’s present being and all that he carries over form the past are squandered in acts of creativity toward the future.

That Zarathustra continues to refine and shape himself as the need arises, and is eternally concerned with his mission of giving for the future lends itself to the gift itself. Zarathustra’s shadow plays an important role as a constant critic upon Zarathustra. The shadow plays a role of devil’s advocate as it points out that Zarathustra has shattered his own beliefs and values to the point where there is nothing that lives that he loves. It may be only through exercising his will that he may live in the face of such a claim. If the claim causes a fall the Übermensch may rise from it again stronger in the knowledge that such a fall did bring. It is thus how Zarathustra harvests knowledge from his continual downfall.

The hermits are people that Zarathustra may only take something away from. The hermits are not able to receive the gift that Zarathustra wishes to impart for they still hold belief in the dead god. In this sense Zarathustra may only take away their very belief. The encounters with the hermits highlight the unbelieving attitude of the people and the very need for the belief to be removed from the city, the end of resséntiment. The people have built a culture of fear and do not trust prophets and walkers of the night. The hermits are also men who wish to impart the same to everybody, which is great conflict to Zarathustra as his gift is different for everyone. For Zarathustra will destroy the good men, the hermits, with his love to bring about new values. It is the mark of the Master values of Zarathustra that brings about a conflict to the hermit types. Zarathustra has come to teach a new contempt, to replace the Christian contempt for the body and replace such contempt with contempt for the current Christian moral virtues. Such contempt is a readying for becoming.

Zarathustra’s attempt to impart his lesson of the Übermensch changes from the direct passage to the masses in a public speech and then to parables. Eventually Zarathustra seeks a few, and ultimately no one. Such a development rings a note with the sub title – A book for all and no one. The literary tension between the story and the title draws out ambiguities between Zarathustra and Nietzsche. Zarathustra speaks to himself, largely to his heart and when he does speak to himself he speaks again differently then when he speaks to others, then when he speaks to the animals, and when he addresses the Sun or the moon. Zarathustra addresses an internal struggle to realise himself as the teacher of the eternal return. When Zarathustra addresses his heart in internal monologue their occurs a multiplicity of ‘I’ – does this mean that Zarathustra may uphold more than one position as teach prophet philosopher are these roles contingent to knowledge and time and or audience? The intentions of Zarathustra’s private speeches to his heart are unknown and for no one but his self. This technique serves to conjure a parody between Zarathustra and figures such as Socrates and Jesus. There is a continuation of the teachings of Socrates, as though in some parody Zarathustra is picking up where Socrates finished. That is to say that Zarathustra is bringing a return to nature, to the Dionysus who speaks the language of Apollo , as Socrates returns to music in his final hours. Not as the naturalist Greeks, for that position is impossible for us to reach, but as modern man, hand in hand with the Übermensch. That after the destruction of our transcendental belief structures (table of values) the search for affirmation can only lie in our world, the natural world.

The natural world is important, and Zarathustra speaks to it thus. So that Zarathustra may know where man came from and what he is returning to in the form of the Übermensch. So similar to the Übermensch talking to man, ashamed of his roots, but laughs at them nonetheless, Zarathustra is willing to speak to the animals as the root of man and laugh with them. Likewise at the conclusion of THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA Zarathustra laughs with man, and so he talks to them. May this similarity be understood as the Übermensch laughing at man, as parody Zarathustra is an exemplar like Socrates but unlike Socrates the actions and modes of Zarathustra are his teachings not his words. So the gift is not the Übermensch but the eternal return, and Alderman continues this by arguing that Zarathustra eventuates into Übermensch.

Nietzsche is consistently applying his argument that neither knowledge, nor belief are absolute. For him to have insisted that Zarathustra believe the doctrine of the eternal recurrence absolutely would have been inconsistent with his understanding of the conditions of human belief. It is then only by imposing an absolute criterion of belief that one can argue that Zarathustra is not the Overman; after all, at the end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he does reaffirm himself (and thus his eternal return). We can see, however, that the pattern of affirmation-retreat must also continue beyond the end of the book, not because Zarathustra is a failure but because, after all, he can make only human affirmations.

Zarathustra cannot be a prophet of a redeeming future and a teacher of the eternal recurrence. The two concepts are contradictory in nature. The eternal return extinguishes a linear concept of time, in which the redeeming future relies upon. So it is in Zarathustra’s final understanding of the eternal return that he may jettison those restrictions that have so far failed his speech and hindered the gift giving.

From this point there exists a play between the speeches of Zarathustra and the actions of Zarathustra. So the teaching of the eternal return may only be grasped by actions and living in pursuit, in knowledge of, the Übermensch. Yet such understanding has come through the expressions of speech in the conversation of the Übermensch, in which the reader is then induced into a cycle, where there is seemingly no escape. Everything is to be helplessly repeated. This is not to say that the eternal return is helpless repetition but the technique, via the character of Zarathustra, allows for a medium in which the eternal return may be communicated.

Bibliography


Alderman, Harold Nietzsche’s Gift, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977

Higgins, Kathleen Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1987

Pearson, K & Large, D The Nietzsche Reader, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006

Rosen, Stanley The Mask Of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Cambridge University Press, 1995

---

endnotes

TSZ Prologue §1
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, pg 74
Patton, Paul – Lecture Notes
Alderman, Harold – Nietzsche’s Gift, pg 39
TSZ Prologue §5
TSZ Prologue §9
TSZ Of The Bestowing Virtue §3
Rosen, Stanley – The Mask Of Enlightenment, pg 65/6
Ibid
TSZ Prologue §3
TSZ Prologue §4
Rosen, Stanley – The Mask Of Enlightenment, pg 66
Ibid.
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Pg 81
Paul Patton – Lecture Notes
Paul Patton – Lecture Notes
Rosen, Stanley – The Mask Of Enlightenment, pg 102
Patton, Paul – Lecture Notes
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Pg 97
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Pg 96
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Pg 101
In reference to my earlier essay on Nietzsche’s Birth Of Tragedy
Higgins, Kathleen – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Pg 102
Patton, Paul – Lecture Notes
Alderman, Harold – Nietzsche’s Gift, pg 111
Alderman, Harold – Nietzsche’s Gift, pg111
Patton, Paul – Lecture Notes

Labels: philosophy

  ¶ 9:59 am 0 Comments

  moderate comments some kind of uncanny reminder,

but if you put five cents in your shoe
you are sure to return in ten.

countdown returns.
just put your first forward
followed by your last back word.

fist fuck'

legs eleven'

hot head'

grumpy boots'

-outdated technology- -body part-

carthand  ¶ 2:34 pm 0 Comments